Site Navigation

Site Mobile Navigation

Rare Winner for Southern Democrats

ALBANY, Ga. — In an election cycle with few success stories for Democrats, the unlikely re-election of Representative Sanford D. Bishop Jr., 63, in Georgia’s Second District, has lifted the spirits of demoralized liberal Southern Democrats.

Conventional wisdom suggested that Mr. Bishop’s district would probably be yet another tally on the Republican chalkboard. He is a longtime incumbent in an anti-Washington year. He is black in a district where whites narrowly outnumber blacks and elections often split along racial lines. He was chairman of President Obama’s state campaign, and voted for the stimulus and the health care overhaul, in a state where national Democrats are so unpopular that the party’s nominee for governor left town during the president’s recent visit.

And Mr. Bishop was marred by scandal: He was accused of steering a nonprofit group’s scholarships to his stepdaughter and his wife’s niece. (Mr. Bishop says his family members got the money before rules prohibiting such awards were enacted.)

Yet there Mr. Bishop was Wednesday morning in the Albany Civic Center — hours after The Associated Press had declared his opponent the winner, based on an incomplete vote count, then retracted its decision — celebrating with supporters and thanking God. Final results showed Mr. Bishop with 51.4 percent of the vote and his Republican challenger, Mike Keown, a state lawmaker, with 48.6 percent.

Elsewhere, his fellow centrist Blue Dog Democrats were less successful. More than half of the coalition’s 54 members lost on Tuesday. Across the South, already dominant Republicans won every Senate race, all but one governor’s race and nearly every rural House race.

Photo

Representative Sanford Bishop, right, at his campaign rally in Albany, Ga., on Tuesday, when he surprised even supporters by winning his bid for re-election.Credit
Todd Stone/Associated Press

So, on Wednesday, in barber shops, at dinner tables and on talk radio stations across the region, the parlor game was to answer the question: “How did Sanford Bishop pull it off?”

Jerome Belle, 67, a photographer, Democrat and longtime friend who attends church in Albany with Mr. Bishop, suggested that the win was partly a result of Mr. Bishop’s focusing on the needs of farmers (the congressman is on the House subcommittee on agriculture). “He just knows how to talk to people, to stop his car and shake every hand in a small town,” Mr. Belle said.

But many white Republicans suggested that the results were driven by high black voter turnout (Mr. Keown is white). Forty-seven percent of registered voters in the district are black, and 49 percent are white. Politics here are still heavily influenced by race.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

“It was blacks. That’s how he won,” said W. P. Wilson, 86, a retired economics teacher and a Republican from Albany. “Bishop voted for everything Pelosi wanted, and that didn’t work for most Republicans. But enough Democrats showed up to vote.”

An Alabama-born former lawyer, Mr. Bishop said in an interview that he had campaigned across the district, even in heavily Republican areas, to persuade moderate voters to evaluate him, not the entire Democratic Party.

“It was a sweet victory,” he said. “I am grateful to God for allowing me to continue this work.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 5, 2010, on Page A21 of the New York edition with the headline: Georgia Democrat’s Win Was Rare One in State. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe